Deirdre Sugiuchi: You talk about white supremacy as being this nation’s original pyramid scheme, one where even those who have lost everything are still waiting to cash out. Do you mind elaborating on this?
Ijeoma Oluo: The system of capitalism is a brutal system that exploits almost everyone. Slavery and the American system of race were created as a function to justify capitalism by getting as much free labor as possible out of Black people to justify the brutality required from it. Also it was to give a space for lower-income whites to play a part in the system to help uphold the system when they were going to get very little payout. The promise was that you were going to get something out of it, that you were going to at least be better off than Black people, that you were going to get your reward, that if you worked hard enough you were going to rise to the top in a way that people of color never would, because it was your birthright, not theirs.
It helped convince lower and middle-class white Americans to play their part in exploiting Black people and Native people, in order to increase their chances and their payday that was never going to come, because capitalism has always been designed to make sure that a select few get the most profit out of the system. It’s a pyramid scheme. You’ve got middle managers getting lower-class whites to buy in constantly, telling them, “Your paycheck’s coming, your paycheck’s coming” and everyone is stepping on everyone else but all that cash is already spent. It’s already allocated to everyone on top.
People have wasted their entire lives and have participated in really violent systems in the hopes that one day it will pay off for them and all that it’s giving them right now is just a sense of identity and the ability to look in the mirror and go, “At least I’m not Black.” They’re losing so much more potential because there could be using a different system, one that doesn’t restrict 98% of the wealth to the very top.
